50 Fun Facts About The World Ends with You

What entry fee does Shiki, Neku's first partner in The World Ends with You, pay to play the Reapers' Game?

Her appearance was taken, so Shiki plays the whole week wearing the face and body of Eri, the best friend she was deeply jealous of.

Who in The World Ends with You turns out to be the Composer, who sets the rules of Shibuya's Game?

Joshua, Neku's sly second-week partner, also turns out to be the one who shot him, picking Neku as his proxy in a wager over Shibuya's fate.

What name does Shiki give the stuffed cat she sewed and fights with in The World Ends with You?

Mr. Mew was Shiki's first sewing project, and in battle her mind brings him to life with claws. Neku insists on calling him Piggy.

Which series gave Neku and friends from The World Ends with You guest roles in Dream Drop Distance?

Kingdom Hearts had only ever borrowed from Disney and Final Fantasy until then, so Neku and his friends were the first outsiders to join that series.

What does Beat, Neku's third partner in The World Ends with You, ride and swing at Noise in battle?

A skateboard is Beat's weapon as well as his ride: he strikes enemies with it and, with careful timing, uses it to block their attacks.

Which console received Final Remix, the port of The World Ends with You that added the chapter A New Day?

Switch owners got Final Remix with Joy-Con controls and a local co-op mode in which a second player handles Neku's partner.

Which real coffee chain's scramble-crossing branch becomes Outback Cafe in The World Ends with You?

Starbucks runs one of its busiest shops there, so the game kept the landmark and changed the name, as it did with other stores and buildings, for copyright reasons.

What is taken from Neku as his entry fee in the first week of The World Ends with You?

His memories are gone when Neku wakes in the scramble crossing, and winning the week returns all of them except the moments leading up to his death.

At which Shibuya landmark does Shiki promise to meet Neku after the first week of The World Ends with You?

The Hachiko statue is a popular real-life meeting spot, and the credits show Neku walking there to meet Shiki, Beat and Rhyme seven days after the story ends.

Which dated gadget from The World Ends with You did its anime adaptation swap for smartphones?

Flip phones dated the story, since more than a decade separated the game from the anime. The sequel, Neo, made the same update.

How do the Reapers deliver each day's mission to the players in The World Ends with You?

By text message, the Reapers set each mission and its time limit, and the stakes are total: failure means having one's existence erased.

In The World Ends with You, on which plane do the dead play the Reapers' Game, unseen by the living?

The Underground overlaps the everyday city, so its players walk unnoticed among living shoppers and can sometimes nudge what those people think.

What can Neku read by scanning the living with his Player Pin in The World Ends with You?

Their thoughts show up on screen, and the same scan reveals the Noise symbols drifting nearby, which is how Neku chooses his battles.

Besides the touchscreen, which Nintendo DS feature triggers some pin attacks in The World Ends with You?

The microphone picks up a shout, which some pins turn into an attack on everything on screen; other pins respond to slashes, taps and held presses.

Which Final Fantasy VII character designer was creative producer of The World Ends with You?

Tetsuya Nomura also drew the cast with Gen Kobayashi, fitting each character to real-world Tokyo first and picking outfits to match personality afterwards.

How is Rhyme related to Beat, who becomes a Reaper to save her in The World Ends with You?

His younger sister was erased while saving him from a Noise attack, and Beat defects to the Reapers in the hope of finding a way to undo it.

Besides a higher existence, what prize can the dead win in the Reapers' Game of The World Ends with You?

A return to life is one of two prizes on offer; winners who choose to transcend instead mostly become Reapers, the opponents of players in later Games.

Which café owner in The World Ends with You is secretly CAT, the street artist Neku idolizes?

Sanae Hanekoma runs the WildKat café and guides new players through the Game, all while hiding that the graffiti Neku admires across Shibuya is his own.

Where on a player's body is the countdown for each mission imprinted in The World Ends with You?

Their right hand shows the timer ticking down, and once a day's mission is done players find themselves at the start of the next, with no sense of the hours between.

Which maths-obsessed Game Master from The World Ends with You returns as a teammate in the sequel, Neo?

Sho Minamimoto steers every conversation toward calculations and bends the Game's rules in a bid to replace the Composer; in Neo he fights beside the new heroes.

Which high schooler is the hero of Neo: The World Ends with You, pulled into the Game with classmate Fret?

Rindo Kanade only wanted to meet an online friend when the Game claimed him, and he becomes the de facto leader of the team he and Fret put together.

What do the heroes of Neo: The World Ends with You name the team they form for the Reapers' Game?

The Wicked Twisters start as two classmates and pick up a college student, a villain from the first game and, later, a Reaper who defects to their side.

Which accessory was the hero of Neo: The World Ends with You given to echo Neku's famous headphones?

A face mask was picked before the COVID-19 pandemic, after the designer saw masks become a youth fashion item in Japan; by launch they were everyday wear worldwide.

Which Conductor in The World Ends with You spreads red pins that make all of Shibuya think alike?

Megumi Kitaniji made the pins to remake Shibuya in a wager with the Composer, knowing that losing would mean erasure for both him and the district.

Tin Pin Slammer, the minigame in The World Ends with You, plays most like which playground game?

Marbles is the model: each player launches pins to knock rivals off the board, as in the game ringer, and up to four people can play over a wireless link.

Which animals do the first Noise resemble when they swarm Neku at the start of The World Ends with You?

Frogs mob Neku before he has any way to fight, forcing him to run until he makes a pact with a partner and gains the power to strike back.

What does The World Ends with You call its stand-in for Shibuya's 109 fashion tower?

104 Building keeps the tower's look under a new number, and the game's success has sent fans on tours of Shibuya matching real places to their in-game versions.

What does the Japanese title of Square Enix's TWEWY mean, a name dropped abroad over copyright issues?

It's a Wonderful World lived on in Japan's special-edition console, a silver DS Lite named for the title and sold in a bundle with the game.

Which sweet is the cool-headed Reaper Koki Kariya almost never seen without in The World Ends with You?

A lollipop, bean paste flavoured, is Kariya's trademark. He is skilled enough to be an officer but prefers working out in the field.

In The World Ends with You, which beings rank above the Reapers as the highest spiritual existence?

Angels supervise the Games from above, and when the stakes are especially high they send one of their own down to oversee play as the Producer.

In The World Ends with You's battles, what green object do Neku and his partner pass to boost damage?

The light puck raises damage each time the two fighters trade it, and it lingers longer with whichever character has the higher sync ratio.

Which cards must players match face down in Shiki's combat minigame in The World Ends with You?

Zener cards carry five simple symbols and were designed in the 1930s to test for extrasensory perception; Shiki's version has players match them face down.

In The World Ends with You, when can pins earn bonus Pin Points with no battles being fought at all?

While the game is off, pins keep growing, so time away is rewarded; meeting other DS players feeds them too, and each method shapes how a pin evolves.

Which subtitle marked the first mobile port of The World Ends with You, released for iOS in 2012?

Solo Remix turned Neku's partner into a pin to tap, since mobile devices lack a second screen, and redrew the sprites in high definition.

Which Reaper guides Neku through A New Day in The World Ends with You: Final Remix, then shoots him?

Coco Atarashi built the warped Shibuya of that chapter as one giant Noise, and she first turned up in the mobile port as a shopkeeper selling paid extras.

Which Tokyo district has been erased, as revealed at the close of The World Ends with You: Final Remix?

Shinjuku's erasure sets up the sequel, whose new Reapers come from the lost district and plan the same fate for Shibuya.

In Neo: The World Ends with You, which of these abilities belongs to the hero rather than a teammate?

Replay rewinds the day, but it is a trap: the pin that grants it feeds on every timeline left behind to breed the Noise meant to destroy Shibuya.

Which Reaper in Neo: The World Ends with You is revealed as Swallow, the hero's mysterious online friend?

Shoka Sakurane secretly helps the heroes, defects to their team as its fifth member, and admits she is Swallow only as she is being erased.

Who composed the rock, hip hop and electronica soundtrack of The World Ends with You and its sequel?

Takeharu Ishimoto shaped the songs to fit Shibuya's many moods, and came back for Neo even though he no longer worked at Square Enix full time.

Which genre did the makers of The World Ends with You explore for top-screen combat before card games won out?

A rhythm game and command-based battles were both explored for the top screen, which the team feared players would ignore while busy with the stylus below.

Which set of animals inspired the brands of The World Ends with You, with a cat brand as the outsider?

The Chinese zodiac supplies twelve of the brands, from a rat label to a boar label, and the thirteenth stands for the cat from the story of how those animals were chosen.

Which Kyoto-based studio, best known for Picross, co-developed The World Ends with You with Square Enix?

Jupiter had just made a card-battling handheld spin-off for the same team, and the first idea here was a version of that game split across two screens.

What was first planned as the source of Neku's powers in The World Ends with You before pins replaced it?

Graffiti around Shibuya proved too hard to represent in play, so the team moved the idea onto collectible pins, with art mixing pop and tribal styles.

Which game beat The World Ends with You to Best RPG at the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards?

Fallout 3 took the prize, though the handheld underdog still collected IGN's award for the best DS game of the year.

After Rhyme is erased in The World Ends with You, what of hers is bound to a pin for Beat to summon?

Her soul lives on in the pin as a small Noise that perches on Beat's shoulder, until the last Game Master crushes that form back into a pin.

In which Shibuya back-street area is the CAT mural where Neku was shot in The World Ends with You?

Udagawa was Neku's favourite place in all of Shibuya; he went there after school to admire the mural, and was gunned down in front of it.

Where does Game Master Mitsuki Konishi hide through the final week of The World Ends with You?

In Beat's shadow, Konishi watches the pair all week where they cannot find her, and her Noise form fights with dark copies of herself.

Which seemingly minor Reaper is revealed as the true mastermind of Neo: The World Ends with You?

Tanzo Kubo poses as one of the Game Master's subordinates, yet he gave Shiba his power over Plague Noise and engineered a whole district's erasure.

What is the two-screen combat system of The World Ends with You on Nintendo DS officially called?

Stride Cross Battle System is the full name, and the team feared it would overwhelm players abroad; they tried to simplify it for the West but ran out of time.

From where did the makers of The World Ends with You photograph Shibuya for reference, without permission?

From building rooftops, on trips the team called location hunts, they photographed the district so that its landmarks could be copied faithfully.